The Friday Ramble

These honest-to-Jebus five day work weeks are killing me, what with telecommuting still on hiatus at HyperMegaGlobalCorp.

Not much to relate on the degenerate front. Still grinding away at the TopRankedPoker signup bonus, trying to get it done before the end of the month. Pretty much boring, breakeven play over the last few days, without much excitement. Played in the Omaha Hi/Lo Bracelet Race last night but never really had chips or cards and went out 40th or so.

I always find it interesting to post poorly played hands, as far as the comments they generate. It makes sense (and I'm guilty of it, too) that we gravitate towards sharing in great detail the difficult hands we're involved in that have a happy outcome, but quickly gloss over (or just ignore) the hands that we butcher pretty badly. Maybe I just suck more than the average monkey, but I can't remember a session or tournament of late that I haven't played at least a hand or two really poorly, including hands that ultimately worked out in my favor, due to the activation of luckbox powers.

I just find the reaction and comments to sharing such hands interesting, as they usually run the gamut from very helpful, valuable advice, to advice to keep such horribly played hands under wraps, to the "Der, take up knitting instead," one liners. And those are all valid, natural responses, that I've had myself when commenting on hands. Just interesting, is all I'm saying.

ScurvyWife has been kicking much ass at work lately, getting a promotion recently and is basically being groomed to replace her boss, when boss retires in a year and a half. Obviously makes me happy and proud, in and of itself, but it's also a larger relief in many ways to see her succeeding and making longer-term commitments to work and career, instead of looking at it as a temporary evil that hopefully would be replaced in the future by being a full-time, stay-at-home mom.

I'm still really, really far from wanting to get on the kid trolley, and fighting it tooth and nail, but it's a pretty large relief to see her back down a bit from the insistence that the only way to properly raise a rug rat is for her to not work and be at home with said rug rat, on a full-time basis. I realize that's an entirely different debate, with all sorts of valid, differing opinions, but I'd be lying if I said it hadn't been looming and nagging at the back of my mind, as far as how to plan for that and to financially make it feasible, if it had to be that way, when push came to shove.

I've been dipping my investing toes into the options waters of late, with decent success. I've been taking sort of a Jekyll and Hyde approach to investing of late, as far as the bulk of our portfolio dollars getting parked in ostensibly solid, long-term funds, ETFs, and equities. Basically the boring, smart stuff you're supposed to do, with a 25-30 year time frame in mind, blah blah blah.

I've also, though, been setting aside a much more speculative chunk of investing money, from some of the profits generated via all my degenerate activities, the idea being that I can scratch the speculative itch and not "risk" money parked in much more smart places. (Yeah, I know, that logic is very flawed. What can I say, I'm a very flawed monkey.)

So far I've been on a nice roll on the speculative side, despite a few bonehead moves here and there. A lot of the gains came from getting into a couple of Kazakhstan oil and gas juniors in mid 2005, both of which proceeded to run up 200% or so in a matter of months. Gave some of that back shorting Google twice at inopportune times, then doubled up on Fronteer Development Group, getting in before uranium stocks started getting hyped all over the place.

Lately I've been loading up on May $25 Calls in CryptoLogic (CRYP), buying in the 1.80-2.00 range. 'Tis more than a little risky, especially with the short window due to the nature of options, but they're releasing earnings on May 8, and all signs point to a pretty good quarter, based on recent earnings releases from Party and Playtech. CRYP got as high as 29 just a few weeks ago but has given a good bit back over the last week, dropping down to the 25.50 range, mainly from a kneejerk reaction to a downgrade from some largely unknown analyst. Good earnings could easily punch it back up to $30, which would make me a very happy monkey.

Pretty busy weekend looming, what with much grinding at assorted poker bonuses and other general monkey work.